TYPES OF STORY IDEAS
CLASSIFICATION of story themes into a small but inclusive number of types is a not uncommon practice in books upon story technic We have stories of the contest of man with man, of man with fate, and similar groupings as you please. This method of classification, however, takes no account of the thought processes inherent in the creative act. A more profitable grouping for our purposes will be one which concerns itself with the inception of the story, and the method of story development by which the writer realizes his intent. Stories so classified fall into five groups: stories of action, character, setting, idea, and emotional effect. It will be possible, I think, to show that all stories fall into one or another of these divisions. Stories of action constitute the greater part of all stories, both loitg and short. Thus the Odyssey, Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, the novels of Dumas and Scott, and short stories innumerable are narratives of action. That is not to say that these ignore character and setting, nor, again, that stories of other types are devoid of action. It is a question of emphasis, and back of that, the story inception. Homer took as his theme the wanderings of Ulysses; De Foe imagined a man to be shipwrecked on a desert island. Kipling inThe Man Who Would Be King imagined the adventures of a white man who, in a savage corner of the globe, set himself up as ruler. In each instance the writer was chiefly interested in the action, and sought to develop a series of incidents which might fittingly set forth the action theme which was the germ of the story. To this end all other interests are subordinated, and it is with the action, therefore, that the reader is concerned. Let us examine the creative process more specifically. I desire to write a story of action and am seeking a fit theme. In the newspaper I read the ancient tale of the young woman who flagged the train just short of the broken bridge; of the wealthy yachtsman who has fitted out an expedition to seek the buried treasure of Captain Kydd; of the suitor who disguised himself as a footman or a chauffeur to be near his lady-love despite parental objection. Or I may imagine circumstances equally diverting: the story of the sheriff who pursues Bad Bill, the outlaw, and traps him by quaint device (this yet to be invented). Again, a story of quiet action: a young man falls in love with a photograph (an ancient theme), and seeking to discover the original finds her to be a girl he already knows, but whom, in the photograph, he has failed to recognize. The themes are endless; every day we have innumerable suggestions, not all good, to be sure, and many, like those suggested, already employed a hundred times. But wherever I find my theme, my interest has been centred in the complication of the story, in its incidents, and if I develop it, my creative act consists in elaborating and relating the action. Only incidentally do I create character and imagine an appropriate background. These are of secondary importance to me, and will be so to my readers, if I hold a just emphasis as I write. Suppose, however, my story has its inception in character. Here, again, the idea may spring from specific observation or from the unaided imagination. If observation, the creative process may be this: in Smith, my neighbor, I am struck by an extreme conscientiousness. He performs his every duty with painstaking thoroughness. There are other qualities in Smith which, for my purposes, are irrelevant. He is rather forgetful, and has neglected to repay the three dollars he once borrowed of me; and I, knowing his sensitiveness, will never remind him. For my story Smith is a man with the one dominant quality, conscientiousness. I then conceive a man resembling Smith, but freed of his forgetfulness and other distracting traits. Him I place in a situation which will try him to the utmost, reveal the full potentialities of his character in the one direction. It may be that life has never tried the real Smith in such fashion In my story, therefore, I present my creation with a conflict of choices, let us say one of love and duty. The love may be for wife or child, the situation sufficiently vital that if he follow the dictates of his conscience his love must suffer in the person of wife or son. The situation turns upon this choice. I supply anyone of a dozen sets of circumstances to set forth the conflict. Smith may be a judge on the bench, and commit his son to prison; he may cause his wife's arrest for smuggling laces through the custom house. The incidents are of secondary importance; my object is to reveal the soul of Smith. Thus the theme of my story has been character, and I have sought to invent circumstances which will reveal character. This is the method followed by many a story writer. Turgenieff, for instance, has a story entitled A Lear of the Steppes in which the chief character does as the mad king, and suffers as he. The circumstances are different, of course; the whole manner of life and the setting are totally unlike those of the play. Again, Turgenieff writes of a Russian Hamlet, a man of diseased will. The procedure is this: to conceive an interesting character and then to reveal that character in suitable incidents and situations. The reader is interested in the action, as is the author, primarily as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Stevenson'sMarkheim, already quoted in another connection, is a story of this type, his, A Lodging for the Night a second. Examples may be found on every hand. To mention but one more, already discussed, Maupassant's The Coward isan excellent illustration of the method. But though the examples are obvious enough, it is well to remember that the writers achieve their effects only by a rigid adherence to the germinal idea. If, in a story of character, the action should assume a commanding place in the reader's attention, the story would be less effective. As character portrayal is the goal, all else must be subordinated to it. The third type of story, that of setting or background, is not so common as the story of character and far less common than the story of action. The theme has its origin in some such manner as this. As I ride through the East End of London toward West Ham I am Impressed by the dreary monotony of the scene: the endless rows of brick cottages, ugly, and fashioned all alike; the dusty streets, the dearth of trees and grass. It is respectable enough, not a slum, but depressingly uniform and, seemingly, utterly hopeless. I resolve to write a story expressive of the dreary monotony of the life which must be lived here. However, as I do not know English life accurately, I transfer my story to a similar district of Chicago with which I am more familiar And I endeavor to make my story express what the setting suggests to me. I select my incidents with this in view, rigidly excluding such as are not in keeping—those cheerful, gay, and hopeful. My characters, too, must harmonize. They are the product of the environment which I depict. In this fashion I endeavor to create a unity of impression and to subordinate everything to the background so that my reader, as he leaves the story, will carry away, as his chief impression, a visual image of the place for which I have interpreted one of the meanings. Yet I need not always make my incidents and characters harmonize with the scene, for there is a single alternative. It may be that life in the environment I have selected is gay and hopeful, not unlike life in better-favored surroundings— or at any rate I may imagine it to be so. Then I can use my gray setting for contrast, a back ground against which the varicolored tints of life appear all the more vivid. Contrast is always a possible alternative to uniformity. Our illustration may, however, be misleading to some. Any setting which prompts a story impulse will serve, and the impulses may be many and utterly diverse. There are romantic scenes calling for romantic stories to do them justice; scenes ideally suited to tender love stories; scenes which suggest mystery and horror; and scenes which call for humorous treatment because of their whimsicality or absurdity. Whatever it is the writer may feel, his obligation and method are clear; he must devise a story to fit the scene, or, as an alternative, one which contrasts sharply with it. The second is the more difficult to do, but is the more effective if done well. 0. Henry, in some of his excellent stories, achieves notable effects in contrast, a theme pathetic or tragic contrasting with bizarre and incongruous surroundings. Of stories illustrative of setting, two or three may be cited in conclusion. Poe's Fall of the House of Usher would seem to have originated in the sight of some old and melancholy mansion falling into decay which prompts the author to contrive a story in harmony with it, and expressive of it. This, at least, is the probable origin of the story if we may judge from the title, the descriptive emphasis upon the house, and the picture which haunts the reader when the story is done. Of Stevenson's Merry Men there can be no doubt, for the author remarks in his letters that the story was written to convey a sense of the terror of the sea upon a wild coast, and that he had a specific place in mind as he wrote. The action he designed to harmonize with and express the scene. Moreover, it is the picture of the place which he wished to make memorable. This it is which we remember when all else of the story is forgotten: "My uncle himself is not the story as I see it, only the leading episode of that story. It's really a story of wrecks, as they appear to the dweller on the coast. It's a view of the sea. " Conrad's story, Heart of Darkness, previously mentioned, is also an excellent example of this type. Yet though the notable examples we have discussed are among the few of whose origin and intent we can be certain, there can be no doubt that place has more than a little to do with the germination of many a story to be classed primarily as one of character or action. A story This, again, might serve to classify the story as one of emotional effect. Undoubtedly scene and emotion go hand in hand here, not to be divorced, and either may have been the prime impulse. theme may lie undeveloped in the mind for long and then of a sudden coalesce with some fitting scene, and in a moment a story is created. Here it would be unsafe to declare the scene a prime cause of the story, but that it was vital to the act of creation is none the less true. Nor can we say how often setting is present in the author's mind as he plans the action of his story. Often it may be indefinite and yet color the story and determine the choice and nature of the incidents. Stories of idea, a fourth classification, are, I believe, of growing importance; to me they are the most interesting. Let us see how such stories originate. They are the result, usually, of the author's generalized observations of life. From his experience the author comes, perhaps, to the conclusion that young people, unable to understand their elders, are cruel and hard in their judgments of them. This is not a novel idea, but it is none the less powerful if to the author it comes afresh and with individual significance. About it he frames a story which is to set forth and illustrate his theme. The story may be humorous or tragic or in a mixed tone of quiet realism. The incidents may be many and various, for innumerable plots might be designed, all expressive of this single idea. It is with the theme that the writer is most concerned, and this he tries to express not in so many words as in an abstract moral, but as a living truth which the reader will phrase for himself upon reading the story, just as the writer appreciated it from his observation of life. Innumerable abstract ideas may serve as story texts, preferably such as have come to the writer from his own observation of life though not necessarily so. He may, for instance, take the proverb "honesty is the best policy" and write a story to prove or to disprove the thesis. Or he may choose Mark Twain's "be good and you'll be lonesome, " and base thereon a story humorous or tragic. Nor need the ideas be so abstract or generalized. It is possible to set forth in story form, that in the city one loses the interest in his neighbor which is characteristic of the country; that in the country one does not appreciate, as in the city, the sacrifice of selfish interests to the commonweal. The possible themes are infinite, and each writer will select those which appeal to him most strongly, which seem most true and significant. Once he has selected his theme he invents action wherewith to set it forth, a harmonious setting, and suitable characters. But as the idea was the inception of the story it will dominate his selection throughout, for he will wish, without phrasing it in so many words, to make it apparent to the reader, and so will take care not to cloud or confuse it by irrelevant or contradictory incidents or characters. Stories of this type are innumerable, and I need cite few to illustrate the point. Maupassant's Necklace is an admirable though enigmatic example. The author's purpose was, I take it, to reveal his philosophy, his attitude to life. It was not a cheerful philosophy, one which may be summarized in some such fashion as this: life is senselessly tragic, filled with pain out of all measure with its desert. It is a spectacle to afford amusement to a cynical creator; or perhaps there is no creator and all is =designed, a mere matter of chance, pain or pleasure dispensed haphazard. This seems to be the philosophy back of the story and may, definitely formulated, have guided Maupassant to the selection of appropriate incident for its expression. It is also possible that some incident similar to that of the lost necklace may have come within his notice. This he refashioned and shaped, guided in so doing by the philosophy he wished to express. It is unlikely that the true incident bore a close resemblance to the finished story. It is equally unlikely that Maupassant worked intuitively. His purpose was, I think, very clear to him, however much we may puzzle over it according to the degree of our understanding. Illustrations of idea stories more obvious and less open to dispute, are such as the following: Hale'sTheMan without a Country, Hawthorne's The Birthmarkand The Great Stone Face, Poe's The Purloined Letter, Stevenson's Will o' the Milland Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kipling's Wireless. Any story with a clearly recognizable purpose is, of course, a story of idea—generally not a good one, for the idea should be so merged with action that our interest is absorbed in the story for its own sake, and we feel as we read that we are developing unusual powers of insight and speculation. An idea so expressed that the reader thinks its discovery original with himself is one artistically conveyed. In The Necklace my interpretation may not coincide with yours, for the writer would deem it poor art to be too explicit. But both your idea and mine doubtless passed through his mind In The Man without a Country the idea, or in this case the moral, is only too apparent, and the story therefore fails somewhat artistically. It was, however, a story with a timely purpose, and the author doubtless thought that it was well to be explicit. Had it been less obvious it might not have been understood by some for whom it was intended. Stories of emotional effect constitute our fifth group. I have been somewhat hesitant of making this classification, for stories of this type may, with but a slight stretch of definition, be classed as stories of idea. Moreover, all stories aim at an emotional effect, though this may not be the sole purpose nor inspire the story. However, the dassification is based on no less an authority than Poe, and there is, too, some difference in creative intent and in method between this class of stories and stories of idea. Poe's illustration is The Raven, a poem in which he sought to arouse in the reader an appreciation of beauty tinged with sadness—the mood, that is, of gentle melancholy. He therefore chose his subject, selected his incidents, setting, and refrain, all with this end in view. A similar method and intent may be the story writer's. His initial purpose may be merely to create in the reader an emotion of sentimental content. He will then select subject-matter which seems to him appropriate: young love, spring-time, innocence, and trust; or domestic happiness, the joy of children, and the simple pleasures of home life. These or similar things are the materials from which he creates plot and devises characters appropriate to his intended effect: the creation of an emotion such as he himself feels as he writes. If his purpose is to arouse horror and fear, his materials may be night and superstition, ghosts and crimes—all the materials which create in the reader a fear of the unknown. Again, his mood may be ironically humorous, and he will then select incidents which will reveal the foibles and petty shams of humanity, the gulf between reality and pretense. The starting-point for the story in such a case will be only an attitude toward life, or a dominant emotion. For the rest the creation of the story will be a matter of intelligent selection of appropriate incident, a scant equipment, seemingly, for a story beginning In practice the author is seldom so self-conscious and deliberate as has been intimated. Rather his attitude toward life leads him unconsciously to select themes and to devise situations which enable him to express himself. The degree of consciousness must vary greatly with the writer. Poe seems always to have been aware of what he was doing, and so with some others, the best artists because the most deliberate. Those less aware of their own methods will prove more uneven in quality, for not being definitely conscious of their purpose they are more easily led astray, beguiled by the imagination to the selection of inappropriate elements. When the choice is happy they are, perhaps, capable of better work than the deliberate artists, for they give less the cold effect of designed artistry. If a man is never carried away by his own emotions he cannot hope always to sway his readers. It may be hard to determine with certainty stories which originated in the sole design of creating an emotional effect. Poe undoubtedly so planned various of his tales of horror and mystery, The Black Cat serving, possibly, as an example. Stevenson may sometimes have been so guided, as in The Suicide Club or The Body Snatcher. Maupassant, in Moonlight, was, I think, similarly guided. The title would seem to indicate that he deliberately contrived a story expressive of the beauty and romance of a moonlight night. This may, of course, be considered a story illustrative of setting. A further discussion of the place held by emotional purpose in story-construction will be found in the chapter on " Unity of Tone. " What we have here set forth will suffice for the moment. Let us summarize to this point: stories may originate in action, character, scene, idea, or emotion. Whatever may be the germinal impulse, the story should, in its development, seek to make that impulse clear by subordinating all else to its expression and so transforming intention to effect. A story of action should interest by reason of its incidents and complications; a story of character by its revelations of personality; and so with the other forms. Strength and effectiveness are dependent in large part upon the elimination of whatever is not germane to the writer's immediate purpose. It is then necessary that he know what that purpose is and make everything in his story conform to it.